


Balance to the Force

by Nny11



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Imperial Officers (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Character Death, It's Star Wars it's Gonna Have PAIN and SUFFERING and FEELS and SASS, Jedi Adora, Jedi Training (Star Wars), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rebels, Sith Catra, Sith Empire, Sith Training, Slow Burn, Swifty is just R2 and Chopper shoved into a single droid, Temporary Character Death, Will update tags as appropriate, no editing we die like meh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22201471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny11/pseuds/Nny11
Summary: The legend of She-Ra is known galaxy wide, an old myth from an less civilized era. As the Rebel Alliance clashes with the Galactic Empire, one young woman will discover that there is always some truth in legends. What does it mean to balance the Force? What does it mean to be She-Ra?
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 67





	1. These Are Your First Steps

**Author's Note:**

> VERY belated happy holidays and happy new year to [Venn364!!](https://venn364.tumblr.com/) After all the insanity we've discussed you've earned it!
> 
> Also, finally, I have combined my two fandoms! It only took a frigging year! :D

The two cadets skidded around the corner, blasting past several mouse droids and the scowling face of Lt. Octavia as they went. Both were laughing, breathless; eyes burning with a rare moment of joy and the thrill of competition.

It was only on passing the last corner, Catra slapping her hand on the exposed pipe, that they finally came to a stop.

“Ha! How does it feel to be the galaxy’s  **slowest** person?” Catra grinned, one fang on full display as it popped out over her lower lip.

Adora panted and held a hand up as she doubled over to breath, “I was, huh, I was just, whoo, a few seconds behind, hah, you!”

It was an age old debate, one that the two had had countless times in countless ways over the years they’d known each other at the Imperial Academy. Both girls had won, and both had lost, and it never seemed to really matter to them. Bragging rights could be traded faster than credits at a pazak table. 

Still.

“And who’s the only one dying for air?” Catra mused, one finger tapping at her chin as if she was giving it any real thought.

Adora batted half-heartedly at the other girl’s tail, which was happily swishing back and forth, and obnoxiously smacking her in the face. She groaned as she got herself upright and glared. “I’m not dying for air!”

“Aww, denial gets you nowhere. Now come here, you look stupid with your cap crooked.”

Despite rolling her eyes, Adora let Catra fix her cap and in return helped to straighten out her best friend’s uniform. The two would always race here, but they wouldn’t dare risk looking a hair out of place when going before the Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor was a strange woman, face covered by a mask as she stalked the hallways looking for any children who were born Force sensitive. No name given, rarely speaking in public, and always bringing a feeling of oily cold when she entered a room. She didn’t always stay at the Academy, often leaving for months at a time, but the imprint she left was palpable. The Inquisitor had taken a decided interest in Adora’s progress at the Academy, despite the girl already being tapped by the ISB and never testing high enough in the mandatory midichlorian count. It had isolated her from all her peers but one, and that meant that unintentionally Catra had also fallen under the Inquisitor's scrutiny. 

The woman had always been dangerous, but having a friend at the Imperial Academy already meant trouble. With the Inquisitor’s temper and Catra’s curiosity, they’d been bound to clash. Adora’s rambunctiousness had been precocious until the Inquisitor met the person who inspired it. A few punishments with one of them choking, gasping for air as their throats involuntarily closed at the woman’s command had been enough to get them both quiet and serious in her presence. 

And today, she’d called for them. It never boded well, for either of them when she had to summon them like pets. 

With both looking crisp and professional once more, a thick tension fell across them. \ _ Fear, concern, questions _ \/ _ Brave, be brave/ _ They walked in silence, the dread growing heavier the closer they’d gotten until they stood outside the Inquisitor’s office. Ears nearly ringing and hearts clenching, Adora had paused to catch her confidence again only stopping from opening the door when she saw the fur on Catra’s neck standing on end.

“Hey,” Adora gently nudged her friend with an elbow, reaching to quickly smooth the fur back down, “nothing bad can happen if we stick together alright?”

Catra stared at the door, frowning as she shook her head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Before either could say another word, the door opened on its own.

“Enter. I do not have all day.” The Inquisitor’s voice cut through the air as clean and harsh as a vibro blade. Her deceivingly smooth and cool tone sending shivers down their spines.

Both girls quickly went in, standing at parade rest in front of her desk. Knowing that Adora always got tongue tied in front of the woman, Catra began to speak in her place, “Reporting as-” 

“Cadet Catra, do keep control of yourself.”

The darkness seemed to thicken, grow, multiply. Catra’s mouth clicked shut and she stared straight ahead as the shadow’s danced over her. She waited, clearly enjoying the way they both straightened further as their nerves got the best of them, before turning to focus on Adora instead.

“I have called you here because you will both be leaving the Academy today.”

The girls glanced at one another from the corner of their eyes in surprise, before straightening up again.

“Adora, I have been watching you closely and you have shown great promise as a Force user.”

“What?” Adora yelped, immediately freezing up at having spoken out of turn. Her? A Force user? Impossible!

“Why wasn’t she taken during selection?” Catra asked, ears flicking with fear and frustration. Knowing she needed to shut up and unable to stop herself.

The Inquisitor looked at them both before continuing as if neither had spoken, “After further observation it was determined that despite your low midichlorian count, you have shown an unusual knack for winning. Always catching a lucky break, blind firing bulls eyes, and more. Your aptitude to join the Inquisitorium is more than sufficient. Congratulations Cadet.” 

For just one moment, the Inquisitor’s hand traced gently along Adora’s cheek and clenched jaw. “Do not fail me, do not fail the Empire child.”

Adora’s chest tightened even as it felt stuffed with warm cotton. She was Force sensitive. Being under the watchful gaze of the Inquisitor, Adora had always been made aware that she was different than the other children at the Academy. That she was destined for greatness. She’d just always assumed it was a load of bantha poodoo, part of the strange and obscure religion of the woman rather than fact. Adora worked no harder than many cadets, her future in the ISB had been exciting and uncertain. As the Inquisitor’s hand dropped from her face she could feel the pride coming off her in waves. She wasn’t sure yet if she felt the same.

The moment of near tenderness passed as she turned towards Catra. “As for you, I must admit I do not have high hopes, nor expectations. You were somehow missed in the selection process, and while I have determined that you meet minimum midichlorian requirements to join the Inquisitorium, understand that our methods are much harsher than the Academy. Only the best survive to help destroy the remaining Jedi scourge. Do not make me regret this Cadet.”

Catra pressed her ears down tight, forcing her tail to remain placid as she nodded. Making sure to keep herself as guarded and ‘under control’ as possible after her outburst not even two minutes before.

“I didn’t hear you Cadet.” The Inquisitor hissed.

“Yes ma’am!” The words grated against her throat, but if this meant she could finally be free of the heavy handed methods the Inquisitor had happily used on her, Catra would say anything, do anything to get away. Sure she was leaving one Inquisitor for many, but that just meant that soon enough she’d be a red blade calling the shots. That the Inquisitors would be her peers and not her tormentors. Everyone knew that there was infighting in the Inquisitorium, in fact the Emperor had encouraged it himself. No one would care what Catra did to  _ this _ Inquisitor as long as she was one herself. 

She couldn’t wait to kick this woman’s teeth in.

“Good. You leave now, I will meet you both at the Inquisitorium in two weeks time. Do not disappoint me. Dismissed.”

The girls saluted smartly and in lock before turning and marching out of the office. Both swirling with a mix of emotions.

Outside, an astromech waited for them, flashing their lights in annoyance before leading them on at a quick clip to the hanger. Adora stared wild eyed directly ahead as she followed the droid, while Catra couldn’t help but grin wider and wider as they walked. She nearly bounced on the balls of her feet as she gently knocked into Adora’s side.

_ /We’re finally out of here!/ _

The words never made it, but it was one of the many reasons the two had fallen into one another’s orbits. It was like they could understand each other even without words. They had always been able to fall in sync with each other for anything, pushing harder and faster than their peers as soon as they worked together. It had also helped when either was under scrutiny and danger, one or the other helping to try and feed the feelings or concepts to the other.

_ \Anxious, worried, excited\ _

Adora had always had more trouble reading Catra and expressing herself. But Catra could always read Adora like an open book. She supposed it made up for all the times she’d seen Adora pull impossible physical feats when she couldn’t keep up.

_ /Calm! Excitement! We can use the Force!? Ha! How awesome is that!/ _

Adora was still shaky, but she drew on the strength of her best friend. Her grin now just as wide and excited as she finally knocked back into Catra’s side.

Was this the Force? Their ability to just...understand one another without words? Their better scores and times? They’d felt something all their lives, sharing only with each other in quiet and vents where no one could hear them or find them. That hum of warmth between the stars. Was this the Force?

Blast this unknown droid! Catra glared at it, wishing it was R7-GR, Ranger wouldn’t rat them out to anyone for talking ever since Adora had fixed her CPU. It was so much  **easier** to talk aloud, she felt like she’d explode if she didn’t get to talk! But instead they made do. Doing their best to read one another, making sure their faces were more expressive and body language loose enough to translate. Only calming themselves at the hangar where other’s might see them.

The droid curtly explained that they were delivering supplies and themselves to the Inquisitorium. That the trip would take four rotations as they would not be taking a direct route in case of Rebel activity, and that the navigational computer was already programmed. It flashed it’s optics in warning. Do  **not** touch navigation. Autopilot would be engaged by the droid itself, and it refused to deal with two hot shot Cadets interfering with its work, Inquisitorium Cadets or not.

As soon as it turned around to drive up the ramp Catra made a face at Adora, who rolled her eyes in turn.

Droids.

They made their way to the sleeping cabin and shut the door before looking at one another and finally started to laugh. Wheezing and excited as they leaned on one another.

“Kriff, can you believe this!?” Catra grabbed Adora by both shoulders and shook her lightly. “We’re gonna be elites! Like, above the rest of the Imperial Army elite!”

Adora shook her head, almost looking incredulous, “I didn’t realize the Inquisitor’s were actively recruiting still! Are there even any Jedi left to hunt? Oh stars...oh Stars, I just realized this means the Emperor’s Shadow is our C.O. ...that’s, oh Catra I’m not ready for this! Maybe they made a mistake? Do you think I can study up on something on the trip?”

“Whoa!” Catra moved her hands to frame Adora’s face, leaning their foreheads together, “Relax a little. Yeah they are, but it’s not like we’re going to interact with them directly that often! As long as we do our jobs we’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t think you can study anything new. Your giant head is full enough.”

Adora snorted, but breathed in time with Catra like always. Letting herself calm before opening her eyes. “Thanks. ...also, you’re showing a little uh…”

Catra’s face twisted with confusion until Adora pointed towards her mouth. She jerked back blushing as she pushed her lower lip back out over her fang. “You barve! Did you seriously just let me stand in there with her while I had my stupid snaggle tooth out!?”

“No! No, you got it before then but it’s,” Adora coughed but failed to stop her giggling, “it’s been there since we got out?”

“So you think it’s funny I’m missing a fang huh? Let’s see who’s laughing when I kick your ass!”

The two went down in a shrieking pile as Catra pounced, completely unaware of what their lives were about to become. Ignorant of the coming divide. 

_ Balance in all things. _


	2. Never Tell Me The Odds!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wait for 5W-F7 to guide the Imperial transport into their trap. Check! Assess the supplies inside. Check! Incapacitate Imperial mooks. Not Check. Escape with mission critical supply. Not check????
> 
> Or
> 
> Bow really wanted this mission to go a lot better than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter are in the end note. As I wrote this I realized I very rarely write action scenes despite all my years writing Star Trek, Mass Effect, and Star Wars. :|

Glimmer paced up and down the narrow pathway from the cockpit to the cargo hold. Stomping and growling, hands swinging in wide arcs and jerks as she explained to Bow exactly why this was so stupid.

“It doesn’t even make tactical sense! She’s just upset that I had a good idea that happens, just for once, to also fall into my purview! Ugh!” Glimmer slapped the bulkhead as she turned around. “Why can’t she just trust me? Why Knight me if she thinks I’m not ready? Why even promote me to be a Commander if she doesn’t trust my judgments?”   
  
“Hey, c’mon now,” Bow smiled gently as he looked up from his seat, one hand with his oiling cloth frozen just over his bowcaster, “it’s not that she doesn’t trust you, or else she wouldn’t have sent you on this mission. It’s not every day we can get a leg up on the Inquisitorium right?”

Her whole head rolled with her eyes as she slapped the bulkhead at the other end of the corridor. “I know that Bow! I just...what good will this even do? They rarely send anything worthwhile on these supply runs since mom started targeting them, like, a decade ago. Why is this one so special? What isn’t she telling us?”

Bow sighed and went back to servicing his weapon. Yes the Senator had sent them out without all the details but that usually just meant it was for their own safety. And with their small modified shuttle resting on the dark side of the moon, their remote scanner skillfully hidden, and their insider knowledge that a ship with some very important cargo on board was coming through today, Bow felt relaxed. Or, well, as relaxed as one could get right before attacking an Imperial ship without backup could be. More relaxed than Glimmer at least. 

He supposed he should just be grateful that she wasn’t in the hold running drills with her lightsaber cane. Glimmer wearing herself out with frustrated practice was a much worse situation to be in then pent up Glimmer waiting to smash some Imperial mooks heads together.

The alert suddenly went off, letting them know that a ship was exiting hyperspace. Bow grinned as he flipped around in his seat, maneuvering them to be ready to strike. “I dunno, but you wanna find out?”

“Force, yes!”

Out the view screen they both watched as the Imperial cargo ship came out of hyperspace, it’s vents automatically opening to release some heat from the engines exactly as they’d planned it out. Bow grinned, sure 5W-F7 could be a hassle to work with, but the droid had never failed them. The ship was dead in the water, unable to maneuver with its heat vents locked open, allowing them to quickly attach their own modified class 720 to the waiting airlock.

Both ships shuddered at the impact and Glimmer pulled her elongated lightsaber hilt off her back with a sly grin. “Oh dear, I wonder if anyone’s home.”

Caster ready and flash detonator in hand, Bow smirked as he leaned against the door frame in the airlock. “Maybe we should try knocking?”

They both bolted as soon as the detonator hit the floor of the Imp’s cargo hold and went off. There were two surprised cries of pain as they slid into cover behind a box of medicine. Bow frowned as he took note of the container types while squeezing off a few bolt. Medicine, rations fuel- none of this was anything special. Desperately necessary, yes. But special?

“Fierfek! Those two are quick!” Glimmer ducked back down by him, her small Blurrg-1120 held at the ready. He’d heard the distinctively high pitched chime as she’d fired off a few rounds. Sure her saber was ready, but it was always better to start off with a blaster than to raise an alarm.

A few blaster bolts charred the spot on the hull where Bow’s head had been just a split second before to look out. The twin kick of E-11’s made his heart skip a beat. “Well they recovered from that fast.”

“Yeah Bow, too fast!”

“Put your weapons down and surrender, this is an Imperial Inquisition Cargo Ship!” A very commanding voice shouted.

But not commanding enough.

Glimmer looked at him with wide pleading eyes and he sighed, before motioning towards their mysterious Imp and mumbled, “They’re Inquisitors anyways. Not like an extra blade is gonna make a difference.”   
  
Her smile was brilliant as she holstered her blaster and ignited her lightsaber. Standing tall and confident as she called back over the distinctive snap hiss, “We know!”

Immediately the two mooks began firing and Bow could feel his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. They were blind firing but each shot would have perfectly connected with Glimmer if not for her saber blade and the beskar staff protecting her. The shots were impressive, but there was no responding sound of a lightsaber on their side. Maybe they weren’t Inquisitors after all. All the same he flicked his newest invention, a knock out gas detonator cleanly between the two. He was much more surprised to have to hurl more in the directions the two split off into. They should  _ not _ have been able to avoid that. Okay, maybe they were Inquisitors! He darted left, and as soon as he saw Imperial red fired his stun bolt. The cathar was somehow still standing. Barely awake from the gas she had inhaled and growled furiously as she was hit. Bow fumbled his next shot but still got her in the leg, then a third one slammed into her head and finally dropped her to the ground.

“Stars,” he quickly moved over and made sure she still had a pulse. He’d never seen anyone take that many stuns before going under. It was there, irregular but there. Conscious cleared, he held his breath and pushed her into the slowly dissipating cloud of gas to hedge his bets. At this rate she’d recover well before they were ready, but something was better than nothing. Reloading his bowcaster, Bow leapt over the containers and looked for Glimmer.

Who was locked in a fistfight with the other Imp, her lightsaber nowhere in sight. This one was a human woman, and she was doing too good of a job at keeping up with Glimmer to not be Force sensitive. He winced hesitating before firing off the first clean shot he could. Throwing the woman off her rhythm just enough for Glimmer to get a choke hold on her. He didn’t waste time and fired two bolts into the Imp’s chest before lowering his weapon.

“Kriff! Bow, that could kill her!” Glimmer huffed as she cuffed the woman’s hands.

He winced. He probably should have used binders on the woman he’d taken down, too late now. They needed to move and fast.“Yeah, well the cathar over there needed gas and three bolts. I’m not chancing it.”

Glimmer rolled her eyes and called her staff back to her catching it one handed. “Where’s F7?”

“Cockpit I’m guessing, c’mon.” The two made their way up the ladder to find him at the navigational computer, a spike sunk deep into the information port. “Hey buddy!”

F7 beeped, dome spinning to glare at them before returning to it’s downloads. A few whirrs and clicks were followed by one long blat.

“What do you mean encrypted? Why would they encrypt data on a secured server?” Glimmer groaned and scrubbed her hands over her face.

Before Bow could point out that it was due to Imperial standard regulations being up to snuff, there was the distinctive beep of a detonator.  _ Gods and little fishes that was  _ **_too_ ** _ fast! _

“DOWN!” Glimmer yelped, throwing the explosive back with a blind shove, sending it sailing back down the hallway. The explosion rocked the ship, but the second much more powerful explosion sent them on their asses.

F7 screamed as he cut the emergency alert, all systems flashing warnings as the ship listed dangerously to one side.

“Did you have to target the fuel!?” Bow hissed.

“I wasn’t aiming for the fuel Bow! I was aiming to have us not get killed, and I succeeded, you’re welcome by the way!”

The same commanding voice shouted from around the corner, “R4, initiate emergency protocol three!” 

Bow smiled as F7 blew a raspberry.

“Excuse me?!” The woman gasped, sticking her head out to glare at them. “I’m your superior officer R4 you-you TRAITOR!”

“Nah, he’s with us,” Bow said with a slow lazy smile and blaster firmly trained on the woman. “But I think you need to calm down. Thanks to your little explosion this ship is going down. We’ll take you with us if you want.”

“And be a Rebel prisoner,” She snorted, “I’ll pass Mr. Hypocritical.”

“I’m not!”

“You threw, like, four detonators down there where the fuel was!”

“Yeah, none of which could set it off!”

Glimmer groaned as she ignited her saber and stuck it under the Imp’s chin. “Great we can all fight about that back on our ship. Move.”

The woman opened her mouth, only to close it and rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

He made sure not to sigh at the obvious ploy but at least it got them all moving off the now doomed ship. He kept his caster up as Glimmer jumped into the burning cargo hold, forcing the woman to go down with them both on alert. They’d nearly made it to the airlock when the cathar jumped him from the side, her heels digging painfully into his ribs and knocking the air out of him as they went down. He desperately twisted mid air, swinging his caster up to try and knock her off only to come face to fangs with her. Bow desperately pushed up as she kept the pressure on him, now having to worry more about getting choked to death than anything else. He yelped as she suddenly pulled back, using his strength against him to slam him into the ground. His head was spinning as she yelped, flying off him as Glimmer used the Force to shove the woman off him.

“CATRA!” Their prisoner twisted to look. She had been fighting with F7 over the data spike as best she could while wearing binders. She was still holding onto it as she watched the other woman slam into the crates near the fire. Too close to the fire. She turned, almost moving to help before looking at the spike. Her hesitation was enough for Glimmer to kick her knees out causing her to twist nearly to the ground.

“We don’t have time for this!” Glimmer shouted as she hauled Bow into the airlock, one hand reaching to seal them in.

“Wait!” The prisoner cried out from the floor. “Wait, Catra’s still there, we have to get her too!”

There was a moment where Bow could feel his heart bleed for these two. He’d never once met an Imperial who insisted on saving their comrades. The ship rocked as another explosion hit, the last group of fuel canisters screeching as the metal ripped itself apart. A massive fireball bloomed and swallowed the cargo hold right as Glimmer closed the airlock. A second later and the four of them would have been engulfed.

Bow closed his eyes as the prisoner howled, as if she’d been the one caught in the fireball. No way anyone would have survived that, and if she had, the raging fire and molten metal would kill her soon. If the ship didn’t tear apart first.

“NO! NO PLEASE, PLEASE YOU CAN’T-CATRA!” The prisoner struggled on hands and knees, lurching towards the controls in a doomed bid to open the hatch. Glimmer easily looped her arms around the woman, pulling her towards their ship and away from the hellish inferno on the other side of the airlock.

“We have to go or we’ll all die!” Glimmer grunted.

“PLEASE!” She struggled weakly and Bow turned away as the crates the other Imp had been thrown into collapsed into the smoldering wreck that had once been the cargo hold. Thick ropes of molten durasteel splashed away from the impact and his head ached. 

They had to get out of here, a fire that large and uncontained meant the cargo ship wasn’t going to be around much longer, and their little freighter had no way to survive the explosion he knew was coming.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” He whispered as he helped Glimmer haul the woman into their ship. F7 had already darted for the cockpit and he didn’t turn back as they detached and began to get distance between them. The floor vibrated under their feet signalling that the hyperdrive was kicking in.

The woman turned to face him, blue gray eyes shining with tears. “Plea-”

The freighter shuddered just as the cargo ship tore apart. Flashes of flame snuffed out as they met the vacuum of space, debris flung in every direction and a huge twisted hunk of the vessel sailed on a deadly course for them before they jumped into hyperspace. He’d never been so relieved to be in hyperspace in his life.

He looked down at their prisoner whose face had drained of color, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stared at the swirling blues around them. 

“I’m,” Glimmer sighed, kneeling down and gently reaching out, “I’m sorry. We had to leave or-”

“You killed her.” Gone was the note of durasteel that had stayed in her voice since the start of their botched mission. Instead it cracked, weak and breathless.

“I didn’t want to-”

“You-you could have, you could have pulled her back! You threw her like she was nothing, YOU COULD HAVE PULLED HER BACK!” Even as she began to sob, she didn’t make a move against them. Instead covering her face as she cried.

Glimmer defensively snapped, “There was a lot going on, and I wanted to make sure we made it out alive! I wasn’t going to get us all killed for one Imperial!”

“...you’re just like they say you are.”

Bow put one hand on Glimmer’s arm to calm her giving her a warning look, before turning to the woman’s slumped form.

“You Jedi,” the way she said it so much like a curse that he flinched, “You think you know what’s best and you don’t care who you kill to achieve it. You’re a monster.”

“Okay, things are a little tense-” Bow’s voice wavered as he tried to prevent a blowout fight.

“I’m the monster!? You just described the whole Evil Empire! All you Imperials care about is crushing people under your boots, and you have the nerve to call me a monster?” Glimmer broke out of Bow’s hold easily, throwing the woman against the narrow bulkhead. One hand reflexively grabbing over her shoulder for her weapon.

“Who calls us that?” The woman half growled and half sobbed.

“EVERYONE!”

“Glimmer!” Bow screamed over them, moving forward to get between them. “Cool off in the cockpit, I’ll take her to the brig.”

For a moment her eyes flashed dangerously at him, before she froze and released her staff. Hand falling limp to her side. Without another word Glimmer left, stomping out to the narrow hallway and closing the cockpit’s blast door.

For a moment, the two of them stared at one another before Bow sighed and helped her to limp in front of him. “I am sorry about your friend.”

Stony silence met him and Bow just knew this was going to be a very painful ride home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Canon Typical Violence, Implied Character Death


	3. There is More Than One Sort of Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora tries to survive imprisonment on a Rebel ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so the original chapter 3 grew wildly out of control and had too much going down, so despite my plan to switch PoVs nearly every chapter at the start we are with Adora now for this and the next two chapters. So plus side is slightly more frequent updates since those are written. :D
> 
> Anyways, Bow is best boy and is doing his best!

Adora sat quietly on the little metal slab masquerading as a cot and struggled with herself. She needed to be ready, mission ready to take advantage of the first opportunity she’d get to escape these Rebels. When she’d first been forced on board, Adora had been too distraught to pay attention. That pain kept trying to solidify and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to move on yet it was too soon, far too soon. 

_“We need a plan,”_ Catra had said that so many times with a twinkle in her eyes, knowing full well that she could come up with something brilliant, but giving Adora the chance to keep her anxieties in check.

Stars, she needed a plan. 

But a plan means thinking, it means scheming, it means organizing and reassessing. Adora didn’t want to _think_. She had never turned away from a task due to personal discomforts, but mostly isolated in the brig she had allowed herself to be too soft. To hide in the numbness that had come afterwards, after-because she needed to start at the beginning with what she knew and that meant accepting that C-but she had to be ready, she couldn’t just give up. It had only been two rotations since Catra, since Ca-since- 

Instead of the cool calm she had always felt when working through a problem, Adora felt white hot rage pour through her. It felt like lightning in her veins. It made her eyes sting with unshed tears. Planning like this was impossible and Adora didn’t want to let go of this feeling just to move forward without...

She took a slow breath in, held it, and released. Anger could be used, the Inquisitor had told her that years ago, anger could be used but rage could not. Rage was the uncontrolled desperate actions of an animal. But anger? Oh anger could be hot or cold, short or long, and always sharp sharp sharp. Before it had been easy enough, Adora had always held her hurts close, and she’d been reassured that she was doing well to hide it. So she kept her anger quiet and hidden, rarely even showing it to Catra out of fear that even a glimpse of it would push her only friend away. So she’d held it tucked just under her skin, letting it out in controlled bursts during training. She rarely lost control.

At least not without having planned on it in advance.

She’d heard them. Cadets, officers, and more all sneered that Adora was only protecting Catra. That she was Adora’s slave. That Adora was soft and weak and stupid. That they were both doomed to fail. That Catra was holding her back. So many times Adora had heard that, and every time it was Catra whispering in their secret way that stopped it. Ironically, Catra had often been the only thing holding her back from flying into a rage on them, held her back from killing them in live fire sims, held her back from disorderly conduct, keeping her in check until the desire and rage had long burned out. They’d talk in their minds until Adora could unclench her jaw, relax her fists, breathe again... Like gentle ocean waves lapping over her heart.

She needed to find that calm again, and Catra was gone.

She’d made only one desperate bid. Adora had tried to reach through the Force, into the space where lights danced in infinite patterns, but had been met with cold and silence. For the first time since she could remember it had been quiet.

It had been well over a decade since Adora had been left to face that swirling pit of darkness on her own. It had always hungered and howled until she’d met Catra. Adora knew she needed to keep herself under control, but... Her hands started to shake as she fought to keep herself from crying. She was going to kill these Rebels. She wanted to howl and throw herself against the force field until the generator overloaded. She wanted to literally tear through the ship until she found them. Adora took a gasping breath, and another shaking one. Kept breathing until she had herself under control. 

Anger was useful. Rage was not. Let it go. (Catra’s other voice soft and hard at the same time, when one firm / _Let it go Adora_ / was the only thing holding her together) Let it go. She can’t be useful to anyone including herself if she can’t focus. Let. It. Go.

The door to the brig swished open and Adora was disgustingly grateful for the reprieve. Even if it was only to launch her whole heartedly into annoyance.

“Dinner time,” Bow called as he walked in, awkward grin already frozen in place.

Since they’d captured her, he’d been the one to bring her meals, foolishly telling her which meal it was allowing her to track time. Going so far as to bring different types of rations; NSFS cubes, gleb, and even a partial K-18 in some strange bid to curry favor with her. Adora didn’t want to eat, felt sick for every bite she took, but food is fuel. She needed to be ready. So she’d choked down every mouthful. After all, she didn’t need to be polite to be ready.

Bow stepped over to the food slot, retrieving her empty lunch tray and replacing it. A bland nutrition cube and hydration cylinder glared up at her this time around, and Adora mechanically began to eat.

“So...” Bow started, tapping his fingers on the used tray as he tried to think of something to talk about. Considering all the useless topics she’d refused to respond to, Adora hoped it would soon deplete to nothing. “Uh, you don’t have to tell me of course, but what was it like? At the Academy? I’d thought about applying when I was a kid. My dad fought in the GAR you know.”

She’d learned a lot about Bow in the last two rotations. His name, Glimmer’s name, their long friendship, his preferred weapons, his opinion on anything he could think of. From temperature (“I know it can get chilly down here”) to drinks (“Oh no, don’t tell me you’re a kaf drinker? Tea is so much better!”) to various nicknames he wanted to call her (“Okay, I think I got it, what do you think of Hssiss? Because of the silent dark side thing? Huh? Huuuuuh? Pretty good if I say so myself!”). Bow was hell bent on either getting information or trying to drive her insane. She really didn’t know which.

“I mean, he was there at the end, actually was a Lieutenant for a little bit for the Empire. Not that he really had a choice until his contract was up. But, you know. He didn’t want me to sign up so I didn’t. Also because my other dad found my application and ratted me out.” Bow shifted his weight around before adding, “I’m not complaining about that. I’m glad. Still, I’ve just heard a lot of rumors.”

Adora glared at him as she chewed her ration cube.

“Right! I understand, it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.”

She snorted and immediately wished she could die on command as Bow grinned at her. He was not kind or charming or funny, he was an enemy who aided in killing Catra! What little good mood she’d developed from his bad joke was instantly lost to the pulsing swirl of emotions clouding her mind.

Bow sighed, “Alright, got it. I’ll go. Just, you know, if you want to talk with someone I-”

There was a terrible moment where Adora’s hair stood on end, something was happening. Going to happen? And then the ship shuddered and threw them both to the floor. She rubbed at her cheek as Bow scrambled to the wall comm.

“F7? Glimmer? Talk to me!”

 _“UUUUuuuggh, why us? What did we do to deserve this?”_ Glimmer moaned over a series of annoyed whistles.

Adora glared at the comm. Firstly because Glimmer was _annoying_ and entitled and, and-and a SPOILED murderer! Secondly because stupid R4 being a stupid big old **traitor**! If anyone was allowed to complain in this situation it was Adora!

“Okay, what does that mean-”  
  
 _“Hyperdrive is down. We got lucky we didn’t drop inside a_ **_star_ ** _, but not lucky enough to be near base. We’re going to run out of fuel before then.”_

F7 gave a few whines and Adora kicked herself for having never learned binary. Catra had and with her there Adora at least had a translator. Even if it was only in their own special way, they were always together. The very few times they weren’t Adora knew simple commands (follow, stop, wait, computer, and so on) and had been able to fake it. She’d never considered there would be a time when she couldn’t rely on Catra.

“...Can you fix it?”

_“Of course, I’ll just pull out all these supplies we picked up and-OH WAIT!”_

“Rude.” Bow grumbled, scratching the back of his neck before looking at her thoughtfully. “Hey, you don’t happen to have any mechanical experience do you?”

She did, mostly because the Inquisitor had been furious when Catra got a higher score than she did. So Adora found herself suddenly apprenticed to a very grumpy fleet mechanic for a few months. She’d picked it up quickly enough, even a bit about messing with droids, but that was more due to an intuitive sense of where something might go than because she knew what she was doing.

_“We are not letting a Sith near our hyperdrive Bow!”_

“She wouldn’t blow it up Glimmer, she’s stuck on board with us.”

Adora tuned them both out to the best of her ability. Not her ship, not her people, not her problem. She placed her empty tray back at the food slot and laid down facing the bulkhead. Let them try to fix it, she had nothing left to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adora has a lot of anger that she just shoves down real hard, and that's the same thing as dealing with it right? Anyways, try not to go full Barriss Offee or Anakin Skywalker okay baby? Adora? Adora!?


	4. You Carry Yours With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that you can’t just ignore your grief, and survive on the crumbs of ash left by your anger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess how much fun I had finding places to put some of my favorite famous quotes in this chapter amongst the Drama? It was a lot! :D

Adora was going to lose her  **mind** if this stupid ship didn’t get fixed! They’d ended up cutting engines to keep power to the life support system three rotations ago and then started rerouting nonessential systems to help fluff out their power even longer. It was a horrible situation, but at least it had cooled her fury, as well as literally everything else. With those reroutes had come a new power and resource distribution, which meant that her cell had slowly been getting colder rotation by rotation. She could hear the poor thrusters working their hardest to keep them moving towards some destination or another, when her hands ached from the cold she’d focus on them to imagine the heat.

It was silly, seeing as the least of her worries should be these little comfort items. And yet...With the brig officially freezing, the lights too low, Adora’s pounding dehydration headache, and R4 bringing her meals inconsistently it was getting difficult to think about much else. It was either think about all of that, or think about her probably upcoming execution. The Rebellion was famed for the way it would execute loyalists, and considering where she’d been captured Adora was pretty sure she was going to end up a statistic. A fact that R4 seemed gleeful over.

Not that she understood what it said, but the number of rude gestures it made with it’s little pincer was telling.

Stars, she never thought she’d miss Bow’s incessant chatter.

Without him distracting her, she had to face herself. Adora had never learned how to turn her mind off, and the nagging voice in the back of her thoughts was always happy to ‘lend a helping hand’ no matter what Adora wanted. She’d gone from making outlandish escape plan after careful revenge killing until it felt like her brain was melting out her ears. And that was exactly when the thoughts kicked in.

_ What if they can’t fix the ship? Where are we going? Why can’t they comm someone? _

Determined to not let her racing heart win, Adora leapt to her feet and began pacing her cell to keep warm. It was fine. Surely it was going to be fine, the Rebellion was also foolishly sentimental about saving their own. Someone had to have noticed these two hadn’t returned on time. Someone must be concerned about their precious Jedi being missing...right?

_ What if they don’t know and we’re stranded out here all alone and that means we won’t make it off this ship andwe’reallgoigntoDIE!!!??? _

Adora began to gently jog back and forth. Was it smart since she was underfed and dehydrated? No. But would it help her feel in control of something? Yes! Control, she was in control!

_ Just not about when I’m going to die. Does it hurt when you die? Oh no, what if I freeze to death and slowly just lose control and forget?  _ Adora huffed at her own thought, smacking her forehead a few times to focus. She did not need to start  **freaking out** on the Rebel’s ship! She was just-just overthinking it! Overthinking everything like normal! _ What would Catra say about this? Will I have thoughts afterwards? What even happens when you die? _

Adora’s heart jumped into her throat as she reflexively reached into the cold dark, recoiling just as quickly when the warmth she was looking for was still missing. While she hadn’t meant to sling shot her anxiety around into anger, remembering that Catra would know the answer to that last question was enough to make her vision almost tunnel. Her jaw clenched painfully and her pacing turned to stomps. She shivered, roughly rubbing at her arms as she tried to wrangle her anger back to something she could manage. It was just so stupidly freezing cold down here!

_ I’m going to die of karking frostbite before anyone gets the chance to take me out! _

She kicked at the wall and when it helped, she kicked again and again. Of course they were going to die a horrible death! Everyone does! 

They had been seven years old when Catra woke her up in the middle of the night, her tapetum lucidum caused them to glow a bright green which had nearly scared Adora to death. After her non-apology, Catra had climbed into her bunk and asked her about death. She’d gotten pretty existential (when Adora learned the right word she made it a point to tease her when the other girl got too philosophical), and it had eventually turned into little more than a game. Adora would insult her “crisis” and Catra would delight in finding terrible times to drop new horrifying facts on her whenever she could. Sometimes big ones (“Do you ever wonder what people’s lives would be like if you didn’t exist?”) and sometimes smaller but still disturbing ones (“Did you know that teeth are really just sharp skin?”) at all times of the day and night. Before exams she’d sometimes throw one or two out to distract Adora from overthinking before a performance. She had never, ever enjoyed Catra’s game so having a slew of similar questions bouncing around of their own free will was about the worst form of self torture her stupid brain could think of.

And really, wasn’t that just typical?

Adora barked out a laugh as she gave one more solid kick. Was it possible to be angry and terrified at the same time? Was there a word for that? She clutched at her head and spoke with increasing desperation to herself, “Okay calm down. Relax, you hit stuff and it’s done and there’s nothing I can do about my unknown and certain eventual death or what happens afterwards and I am going to stop thinking about it! Right now! Yep, no more awful thoughts about horrible deaths! Especially since I can’t control it because rebels are really bad at planning logistics! Whoooooooooo boy, ahhhhhhhhhhh okay. It’s fine. I’m fine. This is fine. I’m just completely alone and trapped on an enemy vessel heading to enemy territory, but, pfft who hasn’t done that before am I right?”

She paused to look at the wall, both grateful she couldn’t see her own face and pissed that she couldn’t even have a proper conversation with herself of all people. Adora gave the wall another hardy kick. “I’m going crazy but that’s okay because why not it seems perfectly REASONABLE!”

She had barely started to genuinely spiral when the door opened.  _ Oh thank you thank you thank you! _ Food would be perfect, food was going to help her calm down!

She wasn’t wrong, but instead of R4, Glimmer stepped in with her meal. For a moment all the air left her lungs, and Adora felt like she could black out. She hadn’t seen Glimmer since, well, since. And now she had to see her when Adora was losing her mind? Unacceptable. 

The Jedi more grimaced than smiled as she lifted the tray slightly. Clearing trying to appear a lot more cheerful and relaxed than she was. Good. If Adora had to suffer her presence, the least Glimmer could do was feel uncomfortable. “Uh, I’ve got your dinner.”

Adora glared, and despite her earlier convictions and nasty headache she decided that she was going to skip this meal as a form of silent protest. Heck, she was going to silently protest this whole thing! There was a long pause until Glimmer finally realized that Adora wasn’t going to say anything.

“Wow, uh, sorry about the temperature down here. I forgot the engines vent heat by the cockpit and not down here.” Glimmer put the tray through the slot and slouched, arms crossed over her chest. “I can get you a blanket if you’d like? We have spares.”

_ How dare she act like she cares! How dare she! _ Adora stiffly walked to the tray and pushed it back out the slot, taking as much joy as she could from the way Glimmer startled at the clang of metal on metal as it fell to the floor.

The two stared at one another for an eternity before Glimmer’s mask broke. She huffed like a child, “You know what? Never mind then, you’ll be fine I’m sure.”

Was it a petty victory? Yes, yes it was, and Adora was rather pleased with herself. Or rather, she would have been if she wasn’t trying to kill the Jedi with her mind. What good were Force powers when she couldn’t even do that? There was a shift, a moment where Adora could feel something whisper to her.

_ Soon. Quick! _

Glimmer had just turned to stomp out when the power shut off completely. Emergency red lights flickered on around the brig; the blast door automatically shut following protocol, and the force field that had acted as a door to her cell dropped.  _ This is it! _ Glimmer spun to face her, one hand going automatically over her shoulder for her lightsaber, but Adora acted faster. If the lightsaber came out this would be a quick fight she’d lose. Glimmer was smaller than her, and on their ship she’d been fast but with very little endurance. Adora could overpower her if she could keep the fight tight and rain down blows. Dominance through overwhelming force; her specialty. She threw herself out of the cell, fists flying as she did her best to dodge Glimmer’s attacks in such a small space. 

Adora was barely aware of when she got hit, focusing more and more on the satisfying feeling of her knuckles connecting with flesh. But Glimmer wasn’t going down like a normal person would, she was taking the punches and fighting back viciously. With a hand breadth between them Glimmer pulled her hands back. The Force whispered to her a warning, it was just like the simulations, and Adora planted her feet. She leaned forward into the Force push Glimmer had tried to use, her mind’s eye seeing the move itself, the shine and ripples. Adora acted without thinking, she reached. 

She Reached! 

Glimmer smashed into the bulkhead, recovering quickly to keep her feet as she stared at Adora in surprise. Good.

“...okay,” Glimmer held her hands up placatingly, “That was really impressive, but, just a thought, what if we didn’t fight? Ugh, I sound like my mom.”

Oh like she was going to fall for that!

Adora threw herself into it, reaching into the Force again along this new pathway she’d never known existed. She called and it answered. At first leaping readily. Pushing and shoving, pulling and twisting. Then almost flooding into her, until she couldn’t control it. She didn’t care. This was her chance, this was the chance she’d been waiting for! Everything blured for a moment before the Force whined, both warning and exultant as something in it twisted right as Adora felt a rush of power. She sprinted, faster than even Catra could have moved and pinned Glimmer to the bulkhead, lifting her enough to make her choke. The power contorted, icy cold and gripping under her. Anything You’ve Ever Wanted. Everything, everything, everythingeverything! And Adora was about to lean in, was about to let go, when she looked into her enemies eyes.

Really looked in Glimmer’s eyes, wide and scared as she struggled to breathe.

_ Is that how Catra looked when the airlock shut? _

It shouldn’t have hit her so hard, but it was more than enough for Adora to finally find control of herself again. To let go.

All the power that had sustained her drained out, like water rolling down transparisteel. And the Force snarled in her mind, hissing and demanding. Adora dropped her enemy, scrambling backwards as it began to howl. Instead of an endless warm energy it felt like a blackhole trying to pull her in. She’d gone too far, it was too powerful, it was too much. It was too much!

// _ HEY!! _ // Without ever having heard her in this space, this most sacred and secret of spaces, she knew it was Glimmer speaking to her.

Adora looked up at Glimmer. Up at Glimmer? She was half collapsed, curling into a ball on the ground with Glimmer holding her shoulders firmly. When did they get on the floor? The Force pulled and she almost drowned.

“Breathe with me,” Glimmer commanded. // _ Breathe with me, stay with me! _ //

Adora could feel the rage she’d held mixing with the power she’d felt, she tried to reject it, she wanted to reject it and it wouldn’t let go. Her attempt to speak back garbling worse than normal, not even half sending what she wanted. Mindlessly blasting, \ _ Scaredscaredscaredscared _ \

“Breathe with me, you need to trust me Adora.” While Glimmer’s voice became softer, smoother with each word, the power behind them was undeniable. Powerful waves smashing her bonelessly against the rocks. She was drowning, she was drowning- Glimmer Reached. 

Something fluttered in the Force between them, a life line that Adora grabbed. Anything to get out and away and back. With one thing slotting into place, she finally took a stuttering breath, then another, and another.

// _ There you go, steady. Peace. _ // \ _ HurtPainSadAngerFearHurtAngerHurtHurtHurt _ \

“I know.” Glimmer’s voice cracked but she held her tightly, hands warm as she tried to keep Adora centered. “I’ve been hearing you loud and clear this whole week. I didn’t-I’ve never-I didn’t mean to...I didn’t mean to- I never meant to do that.”

There was a tug, surprise, and-  _ Flashes of shock and fear and pain, the flash of the explosion and the way the prisoner howled. The way the Force screamed with her. Another voice screaming back in such broken fear. /ADORA!/ _

Adora gasped, falling further back towards the wall as her mind tried to reorient itself away from whatever vision she’d just seen.

“Sorry, sorry! Oh stars, karabast, this is not what I-are you okay?!? That has  **never** happened before!” Glimmer let go of her shoulders, almost leaping away and instead falling on her back in her attempt to get space between them. “Ow! Stupid- are you okay?”

Her heart was beating too fast and in her throat, but Adora choked around it, “Catra…”

“What?”

“That was Catra.” Adora tried to blink back her tears and couldn’t, wiping at her eyes roughly as she tried and tried to get herself back in order. “That was, it was her other voice.”

“Her other-wait. You two could talk through the Force? Without touching?” Glimmer had scooched backwards and sat up, leaning against the door for support. “You...kriff, you two had a Force bond?”

“We, what? What is- I don’t even understand what’s happening!” Adora hissed, her anger cut off before it could start as the yawning chasm in the Force nearly opened up again. Her rush of fear only drew it closer as she wheezed, “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“I can’t! You’re the one causing it! You- okay, back to plan A, I need you to calm down and breathe in time with me. Can you do that?”

Instead of answering she focused on trying to stop her sobbing. Eventually petering out until she could gasp for air roughly in time with Glimmer’s much slower rhythm. The Force quieted, settled, and smoothed. Returning to a placid lake. To a warmth just inside her. She still waited before trying to speak, “I didn’t know...being an unstable Jedi was contagious.”

Glimmer huffed, but it was more laugh than scoff. “You’re thinking of Sith. Jedi are contained and measured.”

At Adora’s incredulous stare, Glimmer chuckled, “Most Jedi are contained and measured, it’s how we try to live. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force. It’s the Jedi Code. The tenants we live by.”

Desperate to not let herself tumble back into the unknown, Adora cleared her throat. Kept herself focused on now, kept herself talking. “She never mentioned a code. The Inquisitor. She...she watched over me, growing up. She said Jedi were violent instigators with no control of their powers.”

“Of course she did,” Glimmer rolled her eyes, “Inquisitors are Sith. They’ve been our mortal enemies since forever! She’d say anything to recruit more to her cause.”

“...I wasn’t. A recruit I mean. She- I didn’t have a high enough midichlorian count.”

Glimmer’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I’m sorry. Did you just say that you, as in the person who formed a Force bond unsupervised, just crossed into the dark side only to snap back into the light, and literally just threw me around like a play toy...that you don’t have a high enough count and have no training? No way. I don’t buy it, you’ve had to have been in training for at least a little.”

Adora shook her head. “No. We...we were supposed to start together.”

“Oh.” Glimmer sighed, curling up with her arms wrapped around her knees. “I...Adora, I didn’t mean to kill her. I’ve never...done something like that. I was scared we would die and I acted on that. It wasn’t right.”

Adora didn’t know what to think. Her eyes stung and her chest hurt, and she felt more alone than ever.

“It wasn’t the Jedi way, and it cost you...it cost her so much because I screwed up.” Glimmer buried her face as the first few tears started to fall. “I-I came down here to tell you I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. To anyone.”

Adora wanted to rage again. She wanted to scream and shout and spit venom. She couldn’t. As she watched Glimmer cry, she could feel the truth of what she’d said. The suffering ringing clearly to her through the air and the Force.

The thing was, Adora had always had a temper. She was almost always angry about something. But her temper usually ran hot and instant. Like a blaster bolt. Here and gone. First to draw a blaster and first to put it away.

She wanted to explain it, she needed to explain it. But when she opened her mouth all that came out was, “Okay. It’s, it’s not okay. But you, uhm, I mean-I get it. It’s...thank you. For telling me.”

Glimmer sniffled, looking up and trying to smile. “You are the weirdest Sith I’ve ever met.”

“I told you, I never got trained. I’m not a Sith, I’m just an Imperial. Just a person.”

The emergency lights flickered and the harsh white glare of the overheads came back on along with the comm unit’s screeching as it turned on and Bow shouted, “Sorry! Everything is under control! PLUS SIDE, I think I fixed the ship!”

Adora stood up slowly, not wanting to collapse and feeling dizzy. She looked at her cell, with the force field active once more but this time she was on the other side. All thoughts of escaping were far from her mind as she tried to process what had just happened to them. She swayed and swallowed down the building bile in her throat. Was that what the dark side felt like? What the Inquisitor had always spoken of, it had sounded to her like electricity. Power to harness and use. That was nothing like electric pulses, that had been a raging storm. A thunderstorm. So vast that her mind couldn’t grasp it’s size. So powerful that even the memory caused her to shudder with fear. That’s what she was supposed to use? Impossible! Impossible without losing yourself, impossible with something to tether her to reality. Adora knew she should be anxious, but instead the bone weary exhaustion of the fight dragged her away.

“Hey,” Glimmer palmed the door open, waving with one hand, “it’s too cold down here. We have spare bunks you can use. Just promise you won’t kill me in my sleep alright?”

Adora nodded, following after her in a daze. She was beyond tired and speaking and thinking, and didn’t even question it as Glimmer led her to an empty bunk in the much warmer sleeping quarters. Just collapsed into sleep.


	5. I've made a lot of special modifications myself!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Free from the brig, Adora starts to connect with the Rebels that captured her and makes a few new friends. One of those kind of literally. There was a reason the vocoder was in the compactor!

Her first rotation free of the brig, Adora learned that Bow had only fixed their sublights and that they were limping towards fuel. She also learned that Glimmer had awkwardly explained what happened to Bow, who had then given up on tinkering with the engines in favor of making sure Adora’s every whim was taken care of. His overly friendly determination quickly fell apart when Adora literally growled at him as he’d tried to tuck her into the bunk to sleep. That had been an awkward way to wake up, and the three of them had quickly taken up an awkward orbit around each other at breakfast.

It was an uneasy truce, but a truce all the same.

Adora had offered to try and help with the engines afterwards, a sort of apology for snapping at him earlier, only to quickly learn that her paltry lessons couldn’t hold a candle to Bow’s engineering know how. Every hour she spent with him was both torture and exciting as she began to slowly master new skills while trying to figure out how to make the rest of the trip far more bearable. Bow was still a sunshine man and technically Adora was still his prisoner. His flat out insistence on treating her like an old friend was both heartening and absolutely obnoxiously grating. But as time passed, his warmth didn't falter and soon enough Adora realized she was starting to warm up to him. Alone at night in her new bunk, listening to Bow's snoring and Glimmer's sleep talking, she would still find that anger. At them for what they'd done, unintentionally or not, and at herself for starting to care about them. _Not everyone needs a friend._ It was something Catra used to sneer at her when Adora's insistence on helping fellow cadets always came back to burn them both. It was so easy to picture Catra leaning over from the top bunk, the way she movements would be stiff as they recovered from whatever the Inquisitor had seen fit to dole out, hair falling in her face as she'd chastise Adora's foolishness.

"Oh, you switched bunks!" Bow had exclaimed before checking the bottom bunk out. "Was there something wrong with this one? Too hot? Too cold?"

Adora shook her head, "No, it was fine I just...felt like switching."

His quiet acceptance had only made her like him more. Be interested enough to finally do the one thing she'd promised herself back in her cell she wouldn't do. Talk to him. It had certainly been a memorable moment. The two of them crammed into the floor space, shoulder to shoulder and upside down as they worked on the wiring system, when she decided to try and bridge the metaphorical gap between them.

“Where’d you learn to do all this?” Adora grunted as she hauled another armful of wiring to them for replacement. “I learned at the Academy, well I was forced to, but you’re really adept.”

Bow’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears, his being in the Force exploded outwards in a wash of wiggling colors and light. He was so much louder than most people she'd ever known! Catra had once been the loudest brightest thing in space, the Inquisitor more an oily cold feeling against her spine, and even Glimmer usually was as quiet and dim as anyone else. But Bow? Rainbows. “You’re asking me questions...about me!? You do care!”

“I do not,” Adora protested, knowing full well that he wouldn’t care that she didn’t. “It's just...idle chatter!”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Bow said with a smirk. “It has nothing to do with being lonely or wanting to know about me.”

“It doesn’t. I prefer _not_ to swap pleasantries with my captors.”

Bow lifted one perfectly sculpted eyebrow in disbelief before setting the little mouse droid down. Adora had the grace to at least be a little embarrassed at her excuse. As it rolled out with the “new” recycled wiring, Bow did one of the most impressive sit ups Adora had ever seen to get upright. She struggled more thanks to her height in a confined space than a lack of muscle in order to to join him.

“Suuuuuuure. Anyways, I learned from a friend. She was wizard at this sort of thing! A tinkerer through and through, and while her teaching methods were unconventional, it’s really come in handy.” Bow offered her a water cylinder before asking, “...so you were forced?”

“Ugh, yes!” Adora groaned after taking a large gulp. “I never had an interest in mechanics and engineering, I mean I can get some of it through sheer dumb luck. I can't keep all that math and science in my head! I always copy off of Catra’s assignments so it…didn't matter.”

Bow winced and the friendly atmosphere died with his smile. Adora cleared her throat, “So where’s that droid coming out?”

When she wasn’t jammed into the most uncomfortable positions helping Bow, Adora had begun to find herself spending time with Glimmer. At first she tried and failed to frame it as information gathering against an enemy, but she knew that wasn’t true. They had a connection of some kind and she was loath to ignore it when answers were so close. She was still hurt, she was still aching, but in many ways, it **had** been an accident. Tragic and awful and fatal. But Glimmer wasn’t some hot-cold pompous egoist with no self control, she was quick witted and kind and trying very hard to actually make Adora feel more at ease. Adora hated that she wanted to forgive her. Hated how many similarities she could see between Glimmer and Catra. But that hate was quiet and small in the face of what had happened in the brig. Any time the anger came, so did the fear, and so did the awful hungering growl and the knowledge that Glimmer had thrown herself down into it with her to try and save her.

So Adora made an agreement with herself. They’d reach Thaymore, they’d refuel, and Adora would find her own way to the Empire. She’d leave them, and hoped they would never cross paths again because she was pretty sure she’d never be able to fight them again.

She had started to get better at lying to herself, just not good enough for that promise to actually ring true. 

Adora had been cut adrift whether she liked it or not, and for the first time in her life found someone who understood her. Not intrinsically the way Catra had, but someone who understood what was happening and why. Glimmer had gamely fielded any questions Adora came up with, although sometimes her answers had more to do with needing to look for the information herself first. No matter how basic or stupid she must have sounded, Glimmer treated each one as seriously as the last and her answers never once made Adora feel foolish or weak. It was completely different from how she'd learned at the Academy, where questions were not tolerated and self sufficiency was key. It was enough to embolden her to seek more.

“What was it you did in the brig?” Adora had asked, one afternoon after she’d felt the Force go white hot when she nearly lost control of her frustration with the manifold system and Bow’s incessant humming, “When I was…?”

Glimmer blinked owlishly, and chewed at her lip thoughtfully for a moment. “I was trying to have you meditate with me, but that didn’t really work out.”

“But it did?”

“No,” Glimmer shook her head gently. “Maybe it helped keep you grounded but you came back all on your own.”

“Barely. ...would it help if I knew how to meditate?”

Glimmer sighed heavily. “I think so, but I’m, I’m also new to this. I just barely completed my own training.”

They sat in silence for a while until Adora decided to make a leap of faith. “Well, if you just learned, then you’re in a great position to teach right? Sooooo...maybe you can teach me?”

Glimmer smiled before trying to cover her softness with snark. “Do you really want my grubby little unstable power Jedi hands all over your Sithly training?”

“Okay, seriously, I’m not a Sith- yet! So, why not?”

Glimmer’s wide, unsettling smile had made it seem much worse than it was when she’d whispered, “Oh I’m going to enjoy this.”

Meditation was difficult. Not boring as she’d feared when Glimmer explained it further, but focusing only on the present, only on what she was experiencing right now was much harder that she'd thought it would be. In part because her nature had always been to worry about the past and future, and in part because every time she managed it, her mind circled back to her own grief. Glimmer had assured her that was normal but it still felt terrible to sit down looking for peace and end up bawling her eyes out.

“I used to avoid meditation because I’d think of my dad and start crying,” Glimmer whispered as she passed Adora more tissues after the second time it happened, “he died when I was little, but I still missed him. Still do.”

“Does it ever stop hurting?”

“Not entirely, no. It changes. You change. ...You continue on.”

It wasn't advice that she'd wanted to hear, in fact she'd been upset at first. But that was the trick wasn't it? To continue forward without them, even when it felt like your heart was breaking all over again. It gave her a lot to think about, and meditation sometimes helped, sometimes hurt. That night she'd sat up in her bed, leaning against the bulk head and gave herself the space to just exist without thinking. Going hot and cold, on and off, numb and distant and prickling all over. It was frightening in it's own way, but when she did go to sleep she didn't wake up with nightmares even if she'd been exhausted.

Two rotations after that had found all _four_ of them in the mess for the first time ever as they plotted out what to ration and got the droid to memorize the list. The astromech for its part had mostly stayed in either the cockpit or down in the engine room trying to balance everything out but took a few hours to help with inventory. Food rations had been tight, water more difficult, and cutting life support to some areas of the ship had become essential. Thaymore was only a week away now, but they’d rather be safe than sorry.

“I never wanted to starve to death,” Glimmer grumbled, one foot kicking at the wall as they’d pawed through the meager remains of their rations to figure out how much they could each eat a day.

Adora put on her cheeriest smile as she held Bow on her shoulders, letting him search the very back of the cupboard with ease, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll be out of fuel in two weeks; so we’d run out of oxygen waaaaay before that.”

Glimmer’s deadpan, “How comforting.” was more than enough to send Adora into a fit of giggles.

Even if it resulted in Bow shrieking as he swayed dangerously on his perch, both hands fisting painfully in her hair, “SAFETY FIRST!?” she hadn't realized how badly she needed the laugh. Glimmer had cackled along with her and eventually even Bow gave up on his blustering to chuckle with them. The droid beeped in annoyance and threatened to leave, getting them back on track.

R4 was really the last one Adora was forced to reckon with. 

Or, well, 5W-F7.

He had drilled her on that, not R4, F7. Not them, but he. Or at least Bow had translated that out to her at least three times, the most recent of which had found Adora nursing her injured foot after F7 had gleefully rolled over it in a "gentle" reminder. Why hadn’t she learned binary? What could she even do to apologize to him? What did droids actually like? They liked modifications, upgrades, oil baths?

In the last few days before making it planet side, everyone had been going a little stir crazy, and that was when Adora finally came up with a solid plan.

She’d found, amongst all of the junk Bow had managed to scrounge up while fixing the ship, several upgrades for various droids. It was mostly trash to be fair, some of it literally. Adora hadn’t thought much of it until she’d decided to upgrade F7 and get him to stop attacking her through good old fashioned bribery. A tried and true method that had gotten her in good with Ranger back at the Academy; which had resulted in more and more droids slowly finding Catra to be brought to Adora for any fixes they wanted off book. Catra had found it hilarious that Adora was running something of a chop shop in exchange for good will from droids who would usually be decommissioned within a few months. She hadn’t been able to argue with the benefits though. 

So Adora had rolled up her sleeves and looked through the junk piles for anything she could use. And she found a gold mine of parts the Force told her would work just as well together than apart.

“You gave F7 thrusters. Why does an astromech need thrusters!?” Bow squeaked watching as F7 flew around the cargo bay with a cackling Glimmer riding on him.

Adora had flushed red, unsure how to explain her position as whipping boy to a droid and instead of admitting to anything she’d said, “He likes to feel tall!”

After that F7 had become much more friendly, but still unintelligible. Which had led her to this latest project before they reached the moon. After all, why  _ didn’t _ people install all droids with vocoders anyways? It would make way more sense than those clunky translators!

Adora sighed heavily, and glared at F7’s dome. She tapped him with her foot to get his attention. “Hey, sit still. If you twist around and rip my fingers off I can’t get this installed.”

F7 gave a sound way too close to snickering for Adora’s comfort. 

Still, she worked quietly and F7 held still. Soon enough the wires were fully connected and the vocoder came to life. She waited a few moments before asking, “Uh, so, can you talk now? Everything should be hooked up.”

F7 seemed to check, his optics flashing a whole rainbow of colors before suddenly dying.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!” Adora quickly shook his chassis before smacking her head on his dome. “This is not happening. I didn’t not just kill this droid! This can’t be happening to me!?”

She reached in, panicking as she tried to uninstall the vocoder, tugging and rerouting and generally not doing a great job until she was zapped by F7’s electro prod after his systems overloaded and came back to life. Adora screamed as she collapsed to the floor.

“Whoa that has waaaaaaaay more punch than I expected!” F7 said. He tilted his newly installed weapon, also courtesy of Adora because frankly she had been bored and it had sounded funny, up to look at before swiveling straight up. “I can talk. I CAN TALK! Ha!”

Adora watched as he did a quick spin around, brain sluggishly catching up that she'd actually done it while F7's dome turning around to try and look at himself. She hastily followed, peeling herself off the floor to shut his chassis and breathlessly laughing, “It worked? It worked!”

F7 bounced around on his struts, almost jumping as he posed with his electro prod. His optical sensor strangely still transitioned through all the colors she didn’t even know he had. He should have only had two at the most, and Adora hadn’t made any changes to that at least. She decided not to question it too much. Magic and miracles. 

F7 chirped,“Oh wow, I am amazing! This is great! Do you know how long I’ve wanted to have a proper conversation with someone!? Like, forever!!”

The door opened up and Bow gingerly peaked in. He’d learned after the thrusters to check in on Adora and F7 whenever they went away for another upgrade. “Heeeeeey, I heard a lot of noises and got a little worried.”

“Nah, we got this under control!” F7 cheered.

Bow stared, one hand grabbing on his chest. “You can TALK!?”

“Yeah, isn’t it great? Adora installed it for me!” F7 wiggled in place and then activated his thrusters to hover a little. “She’s installed so much cool stuff. Hey! Have you seen my zapper? Check it out!” The electro prod crackled with power.

“YOU can TALK!?” Bow squeaked, grabbing at his hair with a manic grin. “How? Astromechs shouldn’t be able to support a vocoder at all! And, no offense, but you didn’t seem like a tech ace to me. This is amazing!”

Adora shrugged, leaning against the wall with a smirk. Flushed with pride as she tried to downplay her  _ amazing _ rookie skills and luck, she swiped her thumb over her nose. “Oh, you know, not that hard really. I just had to upgrade his software a little no big deal.”

Bow’s grin froze, not that Adora noticed. “Upgrade?”   


“Yeah! You guys actually had everything needed to bypass the translator system, and after I removed a few extra bits he didn’t need, the whole unit fit in just fine. Pretty great right?”

Bow stared at F7 in growing horror. “You mean...the extra droid parts we had...in the compactor? The ones from Entrapta?”

Okay so she had done some unsafe and unsanitary compactor diving when she’d been looking for extra wires Bow could strip for the ship. Finding the droid parts had really been a side benefit. “Maaaaaaaybe? Who’s Entrapta?”

“My mentor friend, she’s brilliant!” Bow was quick to say, but just as quick to drop the happy tone. “She also has a habit of inventing killer droids. Like, not assassin droids. Just...slightly more murderous versions than the originals. And all sorts of other deadly traps, ships, weapons...We, uh, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the Empire picked her up, but I made sure to throw away the defective parts she’d left me the last time I saw her.”

“Uhm,” Adora could feel the sweat beading on her forehead, “when you say, defective-”

“I GOT IT! 5W-F7, like Swift, like SWIFT WIND.” Swift Wind said, hovering in mid air and motioning with his electro prod as he did a few spinning circles in place in his excitement, “Like the swift winds of revolution!”

“R-revolution?” Adora croaked.

“Because we’re in the Rebel Alliance?” Bow asked hopefully.

“No silly,” Swift Wind landed with a thump, “because it’s time to free my fellow brethren still left with control bolts and in the shackles of slavery! It’s time for droids to rise up!”

Bow’s eye twitched as he glared at her, and Adora threw her hands up to placate him. “I’m, I’m sure that will be really great Swifty, a ha ha ha! Ha?”

“I mean, with me and you at the head of it, of course it will be! So, Bow, are there any junk shops on Thaymore? For no particular reason of course.”

They spent the last rotation before landing being scolded on an alternate basis about mechanical safety and how they were not here to free the droids of Thaymore while Glimmer spent the time laughing until she couldn’t breathe. 

Thaymore couldn't come quick enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swift Wind, I'm so happy you're finally here! My perfect little spiritual child of R2 and Chopper, but with a moral center.
> 
> Up Next: Glimmer makes a few decisions once they arrive at Thaymore, and Adora accidentally finds balance.


	6. I am One with the Force, and the Force is with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glimmer takes some time on Thaymor to process the last few weeks, Adora finally meets a fathier, Octavia is a Saturday morning cartoon villain and a hypocrite, and an ancient legend finally returns to the galaxy.
> 
> Just another day in the Rebel Alliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I have a very valid reason for waiting so long to post a chapter that it turns out was basically done back in March. That reason is I have too many wips and have swiss cheese for a memory core.
> 
> Content Warning for a brief fight and non-graphic murder near the end of the chapter which is only on screen in the most technical of ways.

Thaymore, it turns out, is a rather beautiful and lush moon. They’re all so grateful knowing they’ll soon be safe, that it takes a moment for Glimmer to remember she’s the one flying so Swift Wind can just enjoy being a passenger. Thaymore means fuel, parts, and food. Not rations but real food again! It also means getting to use a communicator again after theirs had been crushed beyond recognition. And that meant checking in with the Alliance and communicating with her mother again.

Yikes.

The mission hadn’t been anything like what Glimmer had expected. She thought there would be a few idiot troopers to quickly knock out, valuable supplies to steal, and (all around) a boring two days away from her home. In some ways she wished it would have been. While Swift Wind had gotten information, which he had delighted in  **not** telling them specifics while chanting with his new vocoder that it was due to confidentiality, the only other gain was Adora.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she thought of the young woman. Adora was in turns kind, open, closed, and serious. A naturally goofy core showing through only when she’d been really surprised by something. Adora was light wrapped around dark, her presence almost blinding at times. Over the last few weeks they had managed to go from constant attempted murder by Force blasting to something like a friendship. Only every time Glimmer tried to make that final step, gain a friend and help her stay away from the dark, Adora herself would pull back as if she was ashamed.

It made sense, and that never failed to bring her guilt back to the front. For the first time in practically her whole life Glimmer willingly meditated. Desperate to find calm after everything that happened, desperate for guidance and just stubborn enough to refuse asking Bow about his thoughts. She was the one who had overreacted and no amount of Bow’s excellent judgement of character was going to help her learn to be more disciplined. 

Glimmer winced at the memories and forced herself to watch as Adora squirmed under her blue poncho, helping to break up her Imperial Cadet uniform as Bow put her hair in a braid. It was the best chance they had to allow Adora out of the ship, and especially if Adora wanted to go back to the Empire (though Glimmer hoped she wouldn’t) she would first have to navigate through a large chunk of what was technically Alliance territory.

The war had been raging for decades now, and had gone on long enough to allow for some gains. The Evil Empire had been a force to be reckoned with when they had first arrived from wild space, Horde Prime was a brilliant strategist and politician, and his brother Hordak was a very skilled Force user. What had started as an exchange of information had turned insidious. The Republic twisting under its own bloated weight and Prime’s expert guidance. Her mother had been a Jedi long before she’d abdicated to rule her home planet, and later became a Senator. But her position as the final member of the lost twenty had always haunted her steps. No matter the stance that she had tried to take, no matter the power behind her claims, the Delegation of 2000 had been doomed to fail thanks to Prime’s meddling and Angella’s past. 

Failure did not mean the end, and Angella had made sure to ensure a pocket of democracy survived.

The Alliance to Restore the Republic had started small, but when her father managed to kill Prime and had not managed to return home, her mother was there to help manage the explosion of recruits. After her father died, Glimmer had been sent to train under the few remaining Jedi who would take her for as long as they could. Afterall, she’d lost not only her father but also her Master. She went from planet to planet to try and draw as little attention to any one area, and ultimately still ended up back at her mother’s side to finish her training. Something Glimmer had hoped would bring them closer but only seemed to highlight the Senator’s inability to trust her. As if her mother was both hopeful and afraid, despite how gingerly they moved each of their pieces. Like little bits of thin spun sugar instead of soldiers.

For all that they were careful, Glimmer wasn’t sure it had been necessary at all. With their first Emperor dead, Hordak had stepped up to the throne to continue his brother’s mission to rule the galaxy with an iron fist. And Hordak? Hordak was no Horde Prime. He had managed to keep almost all of the Empire’s holdings but his grip had been slowly slipping as the years had passed. The Alliance was no longer some rag tag group! For the most part!

Places like Thaymore were examples of their ability to rise up and free populations, Angella was a symbol for the whole effort, and Glimmer was one of a handful of Jedi left trying to hold the whole thing together with their volunteer military.

Adora was an Imp, but Glimmer had seen more than she’d let on during their fight on the ship. She’d been bombarded by Adora’s screaming and pain in the Force as soon as the explosion had rocked their ship, and she’d had worked hard to keep her shield’s up to protect herself from that deafening howl. She’d assumed the Imp was doing it on purpose, she’d been  **bitter** about that fact too. But almost a week without the ability to touch the Force had given Glimmer a long time to really think about what had happened, and she’d had no escape. Not even in sleep when her shield grew thin, Adora’s pain triggered visions of the Imp’s past, and nightmares of what she’d done on that ship.

Memories of a woman Glimmer had killed but never met had plagued her, wearing her down until she’d realized the answer was not to ignore Adora and her suffering. That the only way out was through. They both needed and deserved to have some kind of closure. She hadn’t expected to become friends with Adora, between her anger and Glimmer’s she was positive there was no way it would happen, but she’d hoped to put at least enough of it to bed to survive until they made it home to base. Adora was strong in the Force, apparently untrained and fit to burst at the seams. Glimmer had been grateful they could talk with a shield between them, and when that fell she’d felt the depths of Adora’s power. If she’d thought she’d been bombarded before, then this had been an orbital glassing of a planet.

The Force had screamed and bled around them, the darkness growing so quickly and powerfully that Glimmer knew she had to be fighting a full Sith. There was no way she would win and no way to escape, and then Adora had stopped. The dark side turned on her, desperate to consume someone with so much power inside of them. And Adora had stopped it, had stumbled and fought and screamed her way free. Only stopping and quieting for the first time since they’d met afterwards in the light. Admittedly, barely, but somewhere that Glimmer could at least see her once more without the threat of madness to eat at their souls. Holding Adora while she’d sobbed on the floor Glimmer had realized something. 

Their very important retrieval mission had not been about supplies and data. It had been about  **_who_ ** was on the ship.

After that, Glimmer finally found relief as Adora began using a very rudimentary set of shields. They were weak and Glimmer found them shockingly easy to penetrate even when she didn’t want or mean to. She reached out to finally get a sense of who Adora was, and instead of touching a glass screen Glimmer’s finger had poked through wet flimsi. Half submerged, Glimmer had found two very interesting things on accident. The first was the obvious place that held the traces from the signature of another, a spot Glimmer had guiltily avoided to provide Adora with some privacy. A Force bond was sacred and to still have such a strong sense of who had once been on the other end...no, it wouldn’t have been right to so much as glance in that direction. The second was the methodical way someone else had been chipping away at Adora’s defenses for years.

Glimmer watched with steely eyes as Bow happily began to show Adora around the moon, starting with the small festival that had been going on when they landed. Both of them would occasionally look back at her, trying to figure out why she’d gotten so serious. Glimmer couldn’t explain it. Not yet. Not here.

Adora was a powerhouse, but one that was only half complete. On top of that Glimmer had done her best to be respectful of the way Aodra had unwittingly blasted her. She could remember all too well the embarrassing times she’d sent things she never meant to to both of her parents and in one horribly memorable case to Knight Perfuma during a joint meditation. To have the Force was to have both a gift and a curse. Most sentients could not block their loud overt thoughts, and they would ring terribly in your own mind if not shielded. It was second nature to block others out for your own sanity, but also for their privacy. With other Force users it was trickier, and with Adora who’s screams may have been heard by the most sensitive of Force users imploding on the same ship? Well, it had been impossible to not learn more. And to learn is to understand, and in Adora’s case it led Glimmer to like her more.

Adora was a good person who had no idea how terrible her life had been. She deserved the chance to be happy, she deserved the opportunity to do more in her life than be someone’s throw away soldier.

And if her mother had trusted her, and Glimmer had known who she was supposed to be looking for, maybe Catra would still be alive. She had meant what she’d said, there had been too many factors and Glimmer had been too concerned with ensuring their survival to care about the cathar she’d tossed aside. The one time she’d heard her voice, thrown in a desperate scream into the Force  _ ADORA!- _ Glimmer shivered and shook her head, trying to be in this moment instead of locked in that split second of terror and agony.

_ “You cannot change the past, only direct the present to guide your future. _ ”

A favorite refrain of her mother’s, one she’d loathed as a throwaway platitude and now found herself clinging to desperately. As she gave Adora her own uneaten slice of cake, as she watched her demolish a hanging party favor, as she waited for the storyteller to finish before trying to shoo Adora along; Glimmer thought of her mother and her father, and consequently of Adora and Catra. Adora’s brightness shining more and more, too bright to look at directly and too enticing to fully look away. Who would she have been if Catra had survived? The possibilities were endless, but most of them pointed towards two beings safe and happy and bright bright bright.

She was the reason this bastion of light and hope had nearly fallen. Because of Glimmer’s mistake.

Glimmer  **would** make this right. She had to.

And currently, that meant that after nearly two days of enjoying the celebrations while Swift Wind supervised their ship repairs, Glimmer had to do her best to not laugh at Adora’s latest joyful reaction.

“What? Is? That!?”

Bow shared a quick smile with her, before looking at their wide-eyed companion. “That’s a fathier.”   
  
Adora’s mouth dropped open, a look of pure focused amazement in her eyes as she whispered, “It’s  _ m a j e s t i c! _ ”

“Do you want to meet them?” Bow asked.

And was met with Adora whining and groaning, she stomped her feet as she squealed, “NO!”

With a little help, they pushed her forward and Bow placed her hand on the fathier’s head. Her eyes popped open as she flexed her fingers slightly. A huge grin erupted alongside a wild pink blush. “This...is the best day. Of my life!”

“I’m pretty sure there’s someone giving free rides over by the food tents if you-”

Visions of Adora sitting alongside various younglings on the backs of ancient and sedate fatheirs were crushed before they’d fully formed. There was a horrible wave of fear in the Force, Adora and Glimmer both turning to stare a moment before the screaming and blaster fire began.

“What’s happening?” Adora barked her question like a command, and Glimmer could see the soldier rising once more.

“It’s the Empire.” Bow hissed as he drew his bowcaster. “There’s not enough ships at port for everyone to evacuate!”   


“Not if we hijack a few Imperial ships!” Glimmer’s bluurg was in hand and she was ready to charge when a grip of durasteel stopped her.

Another flash in the Force, and Glimmer threw Bow out of harm's way as Adora tackled her to the ground. Out of the spot where a small detonator exploded, both of them quickly crawled behind a low wall. Glimmer flipped onto her knees to fire a few shots, when she realized Adora was once again wobbling on the edge of darkness. “Hey, hey! Talk to me!”

Adora was wild eyed as she curled up tighter, clutching at her head. “No. No this, this can’t be right! The Empire wouldn’t do this!”

“Of course they would! This is what they do Adora,” Glimmer didn’t shout, but her voice was sharp enough to cut glass. She needed her to understand. Because they needed someone like her. Glimmer needed her to understand and agree to fight for the Rebellion, where she would be safe and trained, and her brightness would never be tainted again. “They destroy everything because they don’t care about anything besides keeping their power.”

Adora shook harder and Glimmer felt the warning flare in the Force. It was risky to push her, but she needed her to find her focus if not her center! Desperately she looked around before finally finding what she needed. She had to drag Adora’s unwilling body from cover, rushing to the small house and pointing at it, begging Adora silently to understand. 

There, carved into the durasteel side, were the Imperial Wings.

She’d gotten used to the way Adora’s suffering felt, the unique way it left bile at the back of her throat and sorrow ripping through her body. As if Glimmer was feeling it instead. What would her mother do? What would her father do? She didn’t know how to pull Adora back, and if they lost her again…

“This,” Adora whispered roughly, eyes finally opening to reveal the tiniest sliver of red ringing around her irises, and Glimmer had a revelation. Adora was not sad. She wasn’t hurt. She was angry. She was furious. “This is wrong. We aren’t-THEY aren’t supposed to be like this! The Emperor, he said we were creating a better future for the galaxy. One of peace and order, but this...this is…”

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer cautiously stepped forward, gripping Adora’s shoulder, “I’m sorry you had to learn this way. The Evil Empire doesn’t care about peace. Hordak just wants to be on top of everyone else, no matter the consequences. No matter who he hurts. This is what the Empire does, everywhere they go. This is what the Alliance is fighting. Why I…”

Adora turned to look at her, and for one moment Glimmer felt like she was floating in a pool of pure light.  _ What in the world was that? _ Then Adora nodded, swallowing roughly as she did it. “I understand.”

The stolen memories of a lopsided smile, shining eyes as a single fang poked over her lip flashed in Glimmer’s mind. Feelings of warmth and love and a desperate need to protect.

Desperate to not cry, Glimmer forged ahead, grabbing Adora’s hands before pleading, “We need your help Adora. You’re an amazing fighter, strong in the Force, and I think...I think we were supposed to find you. That it was fated for you to be here. With us. Will you help us?”

Adora looked down at their clasped hands in consideration.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Inquisitor’s little pet. We thought you’d died.” A blue gray quarren stood with a wide smirk on her lips, her standard decee trained squarely on Adora’s chest under her one remaining eye. “I have to say, the only thing better than this would’ve been if your little slave made it too.”

Adora scowled, pushing Glimmer behind her. There was a rush of anger in her at that, she was not some kid Padawan in need of protecting, she was a Jedi Knight! Glimmer shoved her blaster into Adora’s palm as she stepped out to the side and drew her lightsaber.

The woman watched with barely a twitch, before dropping her gun and reaching behind her. “I am so glad you decided to do that little Jedi.”

The hair on the back of Glimmer’s neck went up as the woman produced a familiar circular hilt, igniting both red blades.

“Stand down Lieutenant!” Adora barked, as if she’d been an Imperial Officer for years instead of a cadet.

The woman chuckled darkly as she lazily swung her double saber around. “Wow, I thought it was lying when it said you didn’t know.”

“W-what?”

“Catra,” the woman snarled, “I kept her off the right trail but she at least got the scent, thought she could use it against me. Yet you can’t even put the pieces together? Tch. Sad that a pathetic little beast could figure it out before you.”

Glimmer moved in front of Adora, settling into her niman stance. Wishing she’d taken Perfuma up on learning soresu, she forced confidence into her voice. “Who are you?”

The woman smiled, “The Fifth Sister.”

Glimmer managed to block the rapid fire combo pulling detritus from the village to force her opponent to back up. A tug at her opponent’s knee combined with the range of her saber cane gave Glimmer a perfect opening, she stabbed with precision and let the Force guide her strikes. It wasn’t a style that she enjoyed, or one that felt natural, but her mother had trained her very well in niman and she was going to need every edge to get out of this alive.

The Fifth Sister dodged and ducked, but when she finally countered one of Glimmer’s strikes the woman put her muscle and height to good use. She slammed down hard and fast, an avalanche of attacks that Glimmer could do little but survive. The distinctive high pitched ping of her bluurg was a welcome distraction, as the Inquisitor was forced to defend her back against Adora’s perfectly aimed shots. That split attention was exactly what she needed to capitalize on. Her senses spread out as she finally fell into her form fully. Pushing, pulling, leaping, blocking- nothing was off limits, nothing was impossible. She used the environment to guard herself or force the Inquisitor to be open for attack, naturally using Adora’s openings. She could do this, Glimmer grinned as she used the butt of her staff to knock the wind out of the woman. She could do this!

She swept low to avoid the Inquisitor’s enraged charge, only to get kicked in the face. Glimmer used her momentum to hand spring backwards, gaining distance and getting upright. Only to get slammed by the Force through a wall. Chest aching and head swimming, she looked around in a daze at the holopics of a happily smiling family.  _ Oh, _ she thought both distantly and with frustration,  _ This is someone’s home. People live here, we can’t just break it! _

Something wrapped around her boot and Glimmer found herself slamming into the ground a few times, her saber dropping from numb fingers. 

Her father had grinned at her, eyes shining the first time they’d sparred. Glimmer had been so upset to lose, not considering that he was a full Jedi Master and she was holding a training saber for the very first time. He’d knelt down and hugged her, “ _ Don’t feel bad baby girl, you did really well! Most fights take less than five minutes, and most of those are less than a minute of dueling. It happens really quick. _ ”

Huh. Glimmer tried to blink the dust out of her eyes and move, but barely managed to get on hands and knees before a heavy boot on her back crushed her to the ground. She reached for something, anything to get out. To get away and safe.

And then there was a burst of pure white light.

The Fifth Sister hissed, recoiling as she was pushed back by the Force and the wind. Glimmer blearily looked up.

Where Adora had been, there was now a giant of a woman with flowing sun bright hair. One massive hand lifted and called Glimmer’s lightsaber to her. What was easily a staff for Glimmer seemed almost comically small in the woman’s hands. 

The Fifth Sister stared in growing fear, her voice still carrying on the unnatural wind. “She-Ra.”

The Force sang as her eyes opened, ghost eyes ringed in gold, and then she struck hard and fast. The Inquisitor barely blocked and dodged.

By the time Glimmer had managed to clear some of the fog in her mind and staggered to her feet, the mysterious woman was manhandling the Inquisitor with ease. Throwing Glimmer her lightsaber as she grabbed the Inquisitor’s hilt in an unyielding grip over the woman’s own hands.

As if everything she’d already done hadn’t been miraculous enough, Glimmer could feel the Force pull and sing. The Fifth Sister’s eyes were huge as she tried to free her hands and saber, falling still to watch as her red blades slowly turned an icy blue. With the kyber crystals no longer screaming for their Sith, they called hauntingly for their new wielder. The heart of the Jedi beating strongly as the woman finally pulled the weapon free of the Inquisitor’s grasp.

The darkness hissed in pleasure as she easily stabbed one blue blade through the Inquisitor’s chest.

And like that, the woman collapsed and changed before her eyes back into Adora. Glimmer scrambled to her side, checking in the Force to find a quiet and unassuming presence. Far weaker than Adora had ever been, but very much alive.

Two gray blue eyes finally focused on Glimmer’s face before she wheezed, “D-did we win?”

“Yeah,” Glimmer laughed, a hair on the wrong side of manic, “Yeah we won.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Adora slurred, “okay I’m gonnatake anapnow.”

“No, no, no, no!” Glimmer shook her to keep her awake, putting her saber away and hanging the Inquisitor’s- or, well, Adora’s? Adora’s lightsaber from her belt. Grabbing her com Glimmer called Bow. “Status?”

“Lucky!” Bow shouted the tell tale sound of blaster fire sounding from his end. “Ship’s fueled up and mostly restocked, the engine is nearly fixed, and you’d be amazed how many people we fit in the cargo hold.”

“That’s good to hear Bow.”

“A RAINBOW!” Adora shouted, flopping a hand to drag Glimmer’s wrist down. “Hiiiiiiii!”

“Adora?” Bow asked.

“Not now! She's fine. I think? Probably. We’re on our way.”

“What,” he chuckled right as something exploded, “no more ship stealing?”

“Bow, it’s Adora, she’s-” Glimmer hesitated, unsure if the com channel was safe enough, “she’s more important than we realized. Whoever we can save we can save, she has to be prioritized.”

It took a lot of effort, more than she’d like, to dampen her pain and increase her strength with the Force. Enough to haul Adora’s boneless body up and get them moving towards the space port.

She-Ra. The legendary ancient warrior She-Ra. That She-Ra...was Adora. 

Glimmer forced herself to not think about it; instead she dragged Adora along and squeezed a few shots off at any Imp’s unfortunate enough to cross their path. Occasionally using the Force to shove them off of buildings or to fling detonators back into the enemy line. The fight became a blur of colors and sounds, pushing through the cargo bay nearly packed until everyone was crushed together standing pressed together. Swift Wind shut the door behind them, his elctroprod easily zapping the few troopers dumb enough to try and board the ship.

Bow pulled them up and away, expertly dodging fire before hitting the hyperdrive. For one moment nothing happened, and then the ship shuddered as it jumped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want it noted first of all: Glimmer honey? That is very gay of you, you funky little bisexual gremlin, even if it's understated by your own standards.
> 
> Also, I'm as weirdly attached to Octavia as a one dimensional character as Octavia is proud of Catra for scratching out her eye. Sorry to kill you off ma'am, but it had to be done.
> 
> "Form VI, also known as Niman, the Way of the Rancor, the Moderation Form, and the diplomat's form, was the sixth form of the seven forms of lightsaber combat. This fighting style was a hybrid martial art created by effectively combining elements of the preceding lightsaber forms into a single, generalized form. Niman balanced out between the various specializations of the other forms, covering many of the basic moves, but focusing on overall moderation. This resulted in a fighting style that lacked a significant advantage, but also lacking any serious drawbacks, and thereby not leaving adherents as exposed as some of the more aggressive or specialized forms." -Wookieepedia out here saving my ass again

**Author's Note:**

> Catra has a cute lil snaggle tooth and no one can stop me!


End file.
